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How to say it in Scots: Cowp

COWP or coup is recorded in Middle English before it appears in Scots but derives from a French word meaning a strike or blow. It now tends to reflect the result of a blow. So a cowp is an upset or spill and to cowp something usually means to knock it over. According to John Knox (1572), “The pure woman perceaving . . . that he stoupit down in hir tub . . . coupit up his heillis, so that his heid went doun”. In Old Mortality (1816), Walter Scott makes a reference to inadequate child care: “The bairns would be left to . . . coup ane anither into the fire.”

In mining terms, it is a fault causing a tilted seam. The Statistical Account of 1795 for Campsie maintains that “the coal in this district is full of irregularities stiled by the workmen coups, and hitches, and dykes”.